"
"She maun pruv' 't," was all Malcolm's dogged reply.
"Just so; and if she can't," said Florimel, "you'll be no worse
than you were before--and no better," she added with a sigh.
Malcolm lifted his questioning to her searching eyes.
"Don't you .see," she went on, very softly, and lowering her look,
from the half conscious shame of half unconscious falseness, "I
can't be all my life here at Lossie? We shall have to say goodbye
to each other--never to meet again most likely. But if you should
turn out to be of good family, you know,--"
Florimel saw neither the paling of his brown cheek nor the great
surge of red that followed, but, glancing up to spy the effect of
her argument, did see the lightning that broke from the darkened
hazel of his eyes, and again cast down her own.
"--then there might be some chance," she went on, "of our meeting
somewhere--in London, or perhaps in Edinburgh, and I could ask
you to my house--after I was married you know."
Heaven and earth seemed to close with a snap around his brain.
The next moment, they had receded an immeasurable distance, and in
limitless wastes of exhausted being he stood alone. What time had
passed when he came to himself he had not an idea; it might have
been hours for anything his consciousness was able to tell him.
But, although he recalled nothing of what she had been urging, he
grew aware that Lady Florimel's voice, which was now in his ears,
had been sounding in them all the time.
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